Episode 106: VMRS Codes

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All right, welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. Test Show with your host Josh Turley, Jeff Jenkins.

Hey, hey!

And joined today by special guest Nathan Schaefer.

Howdy!

So, uh, a little about Nathan just for those of you who don't know him. Uh, Nathan, why don't you introduce yourself really quick?

Yeah, so Nathan Schaefer, uh, spent a lot of time in fleet industry, obviously, uh, now working for RTA as a trainer. Um, I've done everything from turn wrenches to work parts to manage fleets, government and private, so made the move to Florida and needed a remote job. And so here I am at RTA, and it's been pretty good so far. Love it.

So, uh, so we had a question come into the podcast which was more about VMRS coding and having more understanding of what they are, uh, who they're for, how to use them right, that kind of thing. Um, yeah, because Nathan, out in your travels, like, you've talked to people and, you know, like, the common refrain we get and something of like, oh well, we don't need those, or those are too complicated, or those are just for trucking companies. Yeah. So we wanted to kind of do an episode about, you know, let's dispel some of those myths around what VMRS is and what it isn't, um, and kind of clarify when you should use it and when you shouldn't, you know, what the system actually does, because I think it's a lot bigger than people realize.

Yeah.

So let's just start off at the top. VMRS And it's not VRMS, right? It's VMRS.

It's so hard when you're saying it fast though.

Oh yeah, a lot of people flip them.

I do it all the time.

So VMRS, Vehicle Maintenance Repair Standard, right? That's what it stands for. And that's vehicle maintenance, not truck maintenance repair standard, not, you know, tractor repair standard or anything like that. It's maintenance repair standard. And essentially they're just a set of codes. They're a set of codes that And I think we went and looked just to clarify and make sure that we had this right, because several of us are VMRS certified. But, uh, there's 64 key codes, kind of like a VIN. Yeah, right, like a VIN on a vehicle, uh, has several different— I want to say 5 or 6 different key pairs, you know, where you can flip the value and it turns into something else, right? Like all Fords have the same starting key, all Toyotas have the same starting key, that kind of thing. But the VIN itself is standard. Right. And the VMRS, if you want to think about it, is more like a VIN for your maintenance records, that everything you do when you record it, that it kind of creates this key code, you know, a keychain of 64 different codes. A lot of people, when they think about VMRS codes, they're thinking about just the 9 digits that you usually see in a repair order or something like that, but it really is a lot bigger than that. Yeah. Um, if you want to go dive into all 64 codes, it's out on their website. You can go to the ATA website. It might actually be under the TMC, but I think it's ATA BMRS or something like that.

Yeah, there's several places that have it housed, but like, that's the originator.

Yeah. And so it is, it's a standard that's sponsored and maintained by the American Trucking Association. Uh, so it is, and that's why I think a lot of people associate it with trucking is because they're the ones who own it, um, created it, really took the initiative with it. Um, but I'll tell you is that we've been using this standard since the, you know, early '80s. A lot of the other big systems out there do the same thing, and even some of the newer systems are finally starting to adopt it and realizing some of the benefits of why we, why we use VMRS coding. Um, but Nathan, as we looked at that, because you use this and you were running a public fleet, yep, why would you say, you know, like it the challenges are for non-trucking entities to adopt VMRS into their maintenance operation?

I think the biggest challenge is just because there's so many codes, right? And in trucking, there's, there's very specific things that, you know, light duty or government fleets may not have, you know, air brakes, air tanks, things like that. And so I think when a lot of people get into those code sets and start looking at it, they're like, oh, this is for trucking, it's not for us. But you look at the basics and start thinking about, you you know, brakes and starters and radiators, that stuff's universal across all lines.

So, right, you know, I think that's like the basics are all there, right? And for the most part, even some of the advanced stuff is on there. Um, there might not be things for, you know, like vac trucks or sweepers or things like that. I think that might be part of the issue too, is that some of this stuff is missing from, you know, from a trucking standard. Um, But at the same time, I would say that 90% of all the jobs you do are in the base set for sure.

I think what's daunting, at least for me looking at it, is it's, it's numbers.

Yeah.

And a lot of people like, I suck at math. Thank God for calculators and spreadsheets, because if I didn't have those, I would never get math. But when you look at all those digits and numbers, you look at it like, oh crap, what is this?

Right? And there's no rhyme or reason to it. Like, why is brakes 13? Why are tires 17? Like, that's just random.

Yeah.

Right? There's no way to kind of associate it with a certain job. Um, and usually when I've talked to people or trained people on BMRS, it's, well, ignore the number, just know that there is a number and that all things that are related to it will fall under that number, whatever it is. Uh, but then it comes down to the system you're using, right? Because if you're trying to remember— and I had guys that actually, they just knew in the back of their head, oh, this is a tire, you know, it's a flat tire repair, 17-1. Oh, this is a, you know, a battery issue, 32-2, right? And they just know off the top of their head what those codes are because they've been using it for so long.

Yeah.

But if you're brand new to the system, it is daunting, especially if you're using the full-fledged list of repairs in that key code for VMRS. I think we were looking earlier and there's like 33,000. If you go the full 9 digits for just that key code, right? This is one key code out of 64. And in that one key code there's 33,000 different combinations that you can use. And so you talk about daunting, like it is, it's, it's way too many codes to sort through. There's too many that are probably similar. And I'll tell you that my, my grandfather, he was a huge proponent of EMRS, but he hated the detail. And it's one of the reasons why, like, if you buy our system out of the gate, we don't do 9 digits. We've kind of taken their system, parsed out a ton of the ones that aren't useful or aren't commonly used. And then we pare it down to just 6 digits because it's, it's too much. And so his, his— he would always rant against this. In fact, he got into a bit of an argument with somebody who was doing a seminar once. They almost came to blows over it. Really? Yeah. He believed so much. He was like, we overcode and underreport, right? He's like, we spend way too much time coding and trying to get the detail right when we're recording. The issue, and then we never go run reports on what those things are, right? And so he's like, we're just— we're spending way too much time trying to get these technicians to code the repair correctly rather than running reports on that data and actually doing something about it. And so he was always in favor of like parsing it down, keeping it simpler, getting just enough detail that it was helpful to drive action on and make a difference. It was interesting. That's very interesting. He was super opinionated. I mean, he was always opinionated, but this was one of those things that was like a huge pet peeve for him.

When I've seen— I've seen some of the trucking companies out there that'll pare it down even just to the first 3, so they're only reporting on that major category.

And I do think you can go too far with that concept, and I think first 3 is too far. I would agree, because you lose a lot of the detail. Like, you know, if I just mentioned a couple of the repairs right there, right? Like, well, was this a tire job or was it a brake job? Right? And if you go first 3, you lose all ability to categorize stuff.

Well, that kills your P&L, right?

There's just no way for you to know where it's all going, right? And, and you could do like, well, we don't care if it was a, you know, was it a front brake pads or was it rear brake pads? Was it right? When I'm looking at as a maintenance manager and I'm looking at repair history, that only, that limits me. If it's a 3 digits, that's 1,000 jobs I can do. And I can guarantee you that every fleet out there is doing more than 1,000 unique jobs in a year. Yeah, right, even in 5 years. And if I'm going and running a history on that and I want to know the last time that we, you know, changed out an alternator or we changed out, you know, front brake pads versus rear brake pads, the only way to get that is to at least go 6 digits deep. Um, and you don't have to have— I mean, think when we do that, we usually have like 100 codes in the 3 digits and then another maybe 20 or 30 per 100 codes. Yeah, right. But you do that and you're already at $2,000, $3,000, right, just on that. So that's why I don't— the 3 digits is too simple, but 9 digits is almost too much.

So yeah, the 3 digits, you just don't know, like, if you're having repeated problems on the same things, right? So you can't pull that data out and make wise decisions when it comes to just different repairs or the frequency or the history.

So yeah, well, and think about, you know, when you start adding facilities into it as well, as far as, you know, facilities maintenance. You know, if you're just coding everything to a building, you know, what are we doing in that building? So looking at it, yep, exactly.

It could have been the HVAC, it could have been the roll-up doors, it could have been, right, you know.

Yeah.

And that's another set of VMRS codes that ATA does not support, but it's a huge piece for a lot of maintenance departments because they're also in charge of facilities and fleet maintenance, right? And it's like the two of them together I don't know how those two ever got lumped together, but I guess they do maintenance work, so they must correlate, right?

Assets, right?

Yeah, it's just, you know, is it a fixed asset or a rolling asset, I guess, right? And I, you know, definitely want my technician working on my HVAC in the, uh, you know, outside. I guess it's all the same. Um, yeah, so as we kind of look at, you know, what that standard is, right? And, you know, and obviously we, we make recommendations, you know, you don't need to go the full nine go with 6, and that is in direct opposition to what VMRS, you know, ATA would have you do. ATA would have you go full 9, use all 64 key codes. But it's just, it is, it's too many codes sometimes, you know. But there's a huge benefit to using some codes, right? And you guys have seen this, um, you know, it's like if you didn't have the Miriam's coding system, because I think one of the great benefits of using it is this idea of a hierarchy that I can have all of my brake repairs roll up under one set of codes. And so I can kind of group things together and I can get really good about what are the number one cost drivers in my fleet right now. Is it brakes? Is it tires? Is it engine parts? Is it fuel? Like, where— what systems do I have a lot of problems with? And I can run that by class code, I can get that by vehicle make, and it gives me more data that I can make better decisions about my fleet.

Right?

Because I know where the repairs are going, I know where the money is going. But if I didn't have those codes and I didn't have that hierarchy, you know, you guys, you mentioned using systems like freeform, because I've seen, I have seen FMISs do this where they didn't adhere to any BMS standard, it was just freeform.

Yeah.

And what happens when you do freeform where you're just typing it in? Anything, like I think you mentioned early in your career, that's essentially what you were doing.

Yeah, I mean, everybody calls it something different. So there's, even if it's even if you're capturing it electronically and you can run a report, if everybody's calling it something different, you're not getting accurate data.

Especially if they don't know how to spell the word brake. Exactly right. The E comes at the end and not in the middle.

Yeah, or they, they abbreviate.

Yeah, right.

People write the whole thing or they abbreviate or they spell it wrong, or they're just going to use an acronym of some sort. And so now you've got one job and four different listings for it.

Well, and if anybody's run a vehicle list, right, and they've run light duty and they've had GM products How many instances of Chevy and Chevrolet do we see in a vehicle list, right? And now you want to complicate that with— now we're going to do that same thing for repair history, right? And you get audited or something like that. Well, it just says BRK. I actually can't tell you the last time that we did brake jobs on that because now I've got to search for every permutation of BRK, BRKE, BREK, um, BRKE, right? Like maybe we cut out the A. Was it the front brakes? Was it rear brakes? Was it air brakes? Was it brake hoses? Was it, you know, something, right? The brake master cylinder? Like, what was it? And the brake says, well, I don't know. They didn't type it in that way and they didn't put in any notes.

Well, it's a nightmare for like a trucking company. So if your driver's out there and gets put out of service and then you have to have record of that sign-off for getting it repaired, right, but you don't have a uniform coding type system and you're just having your mechanic, or not even your mechanic, you're taking it to an outside shop and they're repairing it and then they abbreviate or do something, it just becomes a whole mess.

Yeah. And one— and so like, maybe you could— could you get away with using spreadsheets and doing this, or is that the same repair issue, right? The same freeform issue that you run into?

Uh, I mean, I guess if you have dropdowns and you can select, you're less likely to have those issues, right? But if you allow freeform typing, you're always going to have it.

Doesn't matter, right? And that is something about it, you know, like Excel just came out with that where you can do validation and have it pre-fill and do some automation there. You can do macros, things like that, but You gotta have somebody that's smart enough to set all that up, otherwise it's just freeform again. Yeah, and it's just as bad as running paper in my opinion. Um, I have seen, you know, like we mentioned, Nathan, you were at a public fleet before.

Yeah.

And you guys were using this and it wasn't, you know, like we talked about trucking fleet and, you know, like this is obviously owned by the trucking. Uh, were there instances where it didn't work in your, in your shop or like it pretty much covered the bases?

I mean, it, it covered all the basic stuff, right? But we had stuff with, you know, maybe emergency vehicle repair stuff that we were doing or stuff on fire trucks, or like you said, vac trucks earlier, where you get into some of that specialized stuff that it might be missing particular, you know, jobs in that sense. But I would say 75 to 80% of the basic jobs it was covering.

Yeah. And then the ones that you didn't, if you get the right system, you can add in your own codes. And even though they don't necessarily meet the ATA standard, and frankly, this is what we try to do at RTA, right, is we actually try to create a little bit of our own standard that works for public fleets versus trucking fleets versus, you know, maybe some CONAG or something like that. Waste.

Yeah. You're putting a, you're putting a code in there, right, that you can refer back to. So it's everybody's putting it to that same code, even if you have to add, right, you know, specialized code.

So standardization.

Exactly.

And standardization across the industry.

Right.

I think that's the one thing that's lacking. And I kind of wish the ATA would get away from having the VMRS be so trucking-centric, is like let other industries use this and get in on the VMRS standard so that we could have more of a global standard for all maintenance and not just what ATA deemed necessary, right, for their stuff.

Yeah.

And they're finally— and that you think about this too, right? How long have we had hybrid light vehicles? How long have we had battery electric light vehicles? And how long did it take ATA to add electrification components to their ATA BMRS codes, right?

Yeah.

In fact, I, I'd be surprised. I think they might have just finally done that, but I don't think they had a ton because we just didn't really have any hybrids that were Class 8 and above.

No, but now that you've got them all rolling out, I'm sure they've had to do a whole new classification.

Well, I guarantee you, especially because Pepsi just invested heavily in Tesla Right.

Well, you— yeah, they did. But there's like every trucking company starts talking about like all the autonomous trucks that they're testing out now and doing, or even those systems that have to be in place.

Absolutely. Uh, so I mean, I will say about this, right, ATA actually does a really good job of keeping it up to date for their members. Yeah. But I just wish that it was more like, you know, that NAFA was more involved with it because they'd actually probably be the best organization outside of trucking to have it be more of a joint venture between those. Yeah, because NAFA does represent a lot more public and privately held corporate fleets. I think they kind of run the gamut of those. So, um, excuse me, so my voice is a little bit— we were yelling at the refs watching the Suns beat the Clippers. So, um, at least they got it right at the end. They finally—

man, it took them a little while, but I'm just glad we didn't get Scott Fostered.

Uh, it was close, number 15. I was not happy. I was watching him, him and Book, and they were having problems. Uh, so one of the other things that I look at when I look at the VMware S/Code and why, why we, you know, we kind of implemented our system, uh, what we use it for, uh, is a big part of this is warranties and parts, right? Is being able to track parts warranties, being able to track OEM warranties and that kind of thing. So you know what work you've been doing. You know, because typically, like, you go out and you buy a new vehicle and it'll come with a bumper-to-bumper warranty, uh, it'll have an extended warranty on the powertrain or on the transmission. Well, the only way to know that you're doing work that's warranty work is by coding it correctly. Otherwise, you'd have to sit there and, like, if it was freeform, you would just have to know, oh well, this is a transmission job and it had— this vehicle has a transmission warranty, right? Like, this is how the system keeps track of all this stuff for you instead of you having to reserve the brain space to keep track of it. And I don't know, Nathan, were you doing warranties when you were out in Utah?

Not through the system, unfortunately. No, that was one of those things that we didn't do.

How did you get hired? I'm like questioning this now.

I will just tell you where it was when I got hired to when I left was a huge difference. But warranties is one of those things that we, we didn't know about or I didn't know about, you know, coming in. So, but, you know, we had the ability to at least run some reporting on the VMRS data and where we were spending our time and, you know, try to somewhat be, you know, predictive with either part failures or, you know, wear items.

Right.

And try to get ahead of stuff that way. But, you know, there was a few instances I can think of where it would have been really nice to be tracking that warranty because we got burned on, you know, over 1,000 miles past warranty, so the dealer's not going to cover it. So it's a huge deal to be able to do that. And, and so I definitely push that very hard, you know, on our side when we're out training. Um, yeah, because I've seen it.

Well, it's free money, right? It's money that you've already paid for technically because it's included in the cost of the vehicle. Yep. And if you're not recouping it, then you're just paying extra money to the dealer.

Absolutely.

You know, which I guess, I don't know, that would make me feel bad. Um, but I always like, like, from the warranty perspective too, the reason why those VMRS codes are so important is just like you said, right? Like, it helps you notify that, oh yeah, this part, uh, was replaced, or this, you know, this whole system is under warranty, you know, if it's a vehicle warranty. But let's say, you know, like, you have a part and you replace it, and it's a— let's do like a muffler, right? I want to say that's like 45-10 or something like that. It's in the powertrain, and Um, actually it might be under exhaust system. I'm trying to— now I'm second-guessing myself. Don't quote me on this. So, but there's a VMRS code for that. Well, if the, you know, the new part number you're replacing with doesn't match the old part number exactly, the only commonality between those two parts is really it's going to be the VMRS code, right? And right, and that's how our system is built, as it looks to see, oh, wait a minute, you had a part that was on this vehicle or it was an OEM part and it was under this VMRS code. And that's how we know that these are— this is a like-for-like part, right? Form, fit, and function. Um, and if you don't have that, it's really hard to link up and say, well, this part is replacing this OEM part, or this part's replacing— right? Because there's thousands and thousands of parts on a single vehicle, and you would have to know every single one of them and have them preloaded into your system. And any upfitting you did, you'd have to preload all those part numbers, right? So from a data keeping perspective, VMRS actually saves you time because it can just make the connection between the two. Oh, well, these are actually the exact same type of part. Is this replacing this or is this a new installation? Right. Maybe you're adding a second alternator to a vehicle that didn't come from one from the, you know, from the factory with it, you know, and you could track different positions with VMRS coding. In which position did you replace and track your warranty separately that way as well? Um, but VMRS is what makes that whole system work. So if you don't have VMRS in place, you've got to come up with a whole nother set of workarounds to track those part-specific warranties. And I'm talking like, you got to know the installation date, what work order was put on, when did you purchase that part. Like, there's a lot of data that these, um, you know, the vendors want to know if they're going to warranty your part for you.

Yeah.

So, you know, having a system in place makes that work a lot simpler.

Yeah, we talk to fleets very frequently that they lose out on capturing warranties because they don't have a proper method of tracking.

No.

And this is one easy solution. I mean, think about the tens of thousands of dollars every year that you could recoup in warranties if you were just doing something as— I'm going to say simple— as VMRS codes.

Yeah. And it's one of those things that I think when Grandpa did his studies on it, it was something attuned to like 5% of your vehicle acquisition cost. You should be able to recoup that in warranties, right? So if you have a $100,000 vehicle, there should be no reason why you don't have more than $5,000 warranty claims on it, which is a lot.

I mean, you think about that, especially fleets that run thousands of vehicles.

Yep.

That's a lot of money out the door.

Yep.

And he might have said 5% annually. Now I got to go look at that too, man. My— and well, these numbers are usually just right into my head and they're just not coming today.

It's even bigger if it's annually.

It's huge if it's—

oh my gosh, right?

You imagine you've got a vehicle that's got a life cycle of 5 years and you're doing 5% annually, that compounds. Like, that's crazy. Yeah.

It's huge.

Yeah, it's big numbers. It's big money on parts and OEM.

Yeah.

Well, and I think like we spent a lot of time talking about VMRS, right? And obviously you've got the warranty aspect of it, you've got the part aspect of it, you know, and we use those interchangeably. But we've still kind of like, we're really focusing on those, you know, the 9-digit repair type codes. We mentioned there's 64 different keys of which the 9 digits is just one key. So there's 63 other keys that we haven't even talked about really. Um, but some of the common ones that you're going to see are going to be things like work accomplished code or a cause code. And those are huge. When you talked about Nathan doing the analysis and trending, what's causing the failure? Was it a part fail? Did it fail under warranty? Did it fail out of warranty? Was it driver abuse? Was it right? Like, and the cause codes are a huge, uh, piece of that trend analysis that comes straight out of the VMRS code standards.

Yeah, the cause codes is what helped us, um, correct driver behavior.

Yeah.

In trucking, right? And a lot of it had to do with transmission and clutches and that kind of thing.

Yeah, right.

Because you had a guy who burned up 3 clutches in the span of a year and a half.

Yeah.

Because he didn't know how to shift.

And you only know that because you go back and look and say, oh, how often have we used this part on this vehicle?

Correct.

You start looking at the interval and you look and say, well, we've done this job because of the VRS code, we've done this job 3 times and 18 months. Uh, you know, on average we should be getting at least 3 years out of that clutch, right? And we're getting 6 months, so there's a, there's a problem here.

Yeah, you know what we did? We just got them an automatic.

That's the best way to do it, right? Sometimes technology is the answer.

That's right.

You know, the other side of looking at that cause code too is, you know, we used to do a, a spring and fall cleanup for the residents in the city.

Yeah.

And we would put a cause code in there that, you know, anytime a you know, dump truck or loader or something came in that had an issue or needed a repair, if it was caused by out doing that cleanup, you know, we would, we would tag it that way. And then we could run reporting and say, hey, this is increased maintenance costs because of whatever this is that we're doing.

So this free service that you guys are offering to the citizens, you know, as nice as it is, is a benefit to the system, you know, to the city. Yeah, like there's a real cost to doing that, right? It's not free. There's no free lunch. And here's what it's costing you. That's— yeah, that's a great way to use it.

It's a lot of good benefits.

So we'll also see things like, um, I'm going to come back to, to the check repair replace, the repair type, but we'll use them like for the, you know, unscheduled versus scheduled versus emergency, right? Like you should be doing most of your work proactively, and part of the VMRS standard is flagging was this work order a scheduled work order, which would be like a PM or a road call, you know, like not a road call, a recall or service bulletin, or was it a road call, or was it an emergency breakdown? Um, you know, and, and all of those buckets you want to run and make sure that, you know, you're running about 80 to 90% scheduled work. Otherwise, what you're going to see is that your repair costs actually increase and go up. Only way you can tell that, the VMRS standards, right? Implementing those and tracking, uh, you know, when you're doing your repairs, was this scheduled, unscheduled, or emergency? The last one, though, that I really like, and this is one that Grandpa was really big on, was the repair type. And this is the check, repair, replace, you know, is it a PM? Is it something else? But those check, repair, replace, they drove the standard repair times in the system. Yeah, because it would take you longer to repair something or replace something than it does just to check something. And so if you're looking at— I want to implement standard repair times into my fleet, I want to understand You know, are my technicians being as productive or as efficient as they can be? The only way to measure that, the only way to maintain it and improve it, is implementing VMRS code standards. Chilton's has, you know, Chilton's and Mitchell, I think, both use VMRS. So you can go out and get their VMRS times for your vehicles. But honestly, you know, I just like using your own times. You know, it's your shop, it's your techs, it's your vehicles, your fleet. There's no other unique combination that's going to be just like yours.

Well, think about just regionally the differences, you know, regionally where people may be pushing snow or not pushing snow.

Totally.

You know how that can affect things. So yeah, well, you're coming down here to Arizona, you're not dealing with rust.

Yeah, you know, you're not dealing with salt corrosion. Like, we don't have that here. Uh, now we have a lot of peeled paint because, you know, the UV just eats the paint and the clear coat here. Yeah, but yeah, no, you just don't deal with half those issues, right? And then you think about regionally too. My favorite was there's an island up in Washington and it would take them 2 or 3 days to get parts, right? And so, you know, from a standard repair time, that wouldn't impact your standard repair time. But when you think regionally about how long do these repairs stay open and, you know, how do I know, you know, like just some interesting things about if you needed to send it out for repair, send it out to Sublet. Now all these things are going to impact it. And it's regional because they've got to take a ferry, and it was a 2-day boat ride, right? Like a, you know, not really the boat ride itself didn't take 2 days, but no, but just turnaround, just the turnaround, right? Like you were on an island, a literal island, right? And like Steve's out in Hawaii, you know, like dear goodness, trying to get stuff out to him right now. Uh, I can't tell you how many times I log into Amazon and it says, no, this item's not available to ship to your location. Because I remember the last time I shipped something to him in Hawaii. Um, but regionally, like, how do you deal with that in the VMRS codes? If you're using your own data and you're using VMRS codes, that's way easier to track and way easier to make improvements to your operation than if you weren't using VMRS codes, or if you're trying to use some standard off the internet.

So, yep.

Uh, I think last piece is just certification, right? Like, VMRS does have a certification that you can go out and get It's easy.

Uh, I think, I think like what, 80% of our office passed in a week.

Yeah, it didn't take too long, right? But if you really want to understand the full breadth of what is included in VMRS, and like, it's a good— there's a study guide that comes with it, and you learn a lot, right? And then you can go get certified, and you can actually say that you're officially VMRS certified. You can go email Jack Poster over there at ATA, and he'll get you a full certificate and everything. But I would recommend, you know, if you're curious more about learning how to better use VMware ESXi, uh, how it can help you in your job, or just, you know, just want to understand it more, just go out and get certified. It's super quick, super simple.

So, you know, you know, we can also help answer some of those questions if you have them.

Yeah.

And you don't fully understand.

So even if you are certified, right, we're happy to help.

Absolutely.

And even give you ways to flex around what they might say is the standard, you know, because again, we don't want to overcode and underreport, right? Just because, you know, like, here's the standard, we want to do it. There is a balance between going overkill with coding and finding that right balance of not undercoding.

So where's the best place to start? What if I don't do VMRS and I want to start? What— this is so overwhelming with so many codes, right? Like, how do How do we tell people to start?

You know what, your best option, it's an FMIS, right? I mean, like, it's— there's— you could go out and try to get one, go get your spreadsheet, right? If you want to upload it in there, you can go download the codes from ATA in a spreadsheet form. Uh, you might have to purchase some, I'm not sure, but most FMISs have a license for the VMRS code standard. So if you're not using an FMIS at all, start there. If you're not using an FMIS that supports VMRS, switch. Find one that does. There's too many— there's way too many of us that do support it. I mean, and make it an integral part of our system. Um, you know, and a lot of us, like, we were built from the ground up on VMRS. Uh, several of us, you know, we might have added it later, but that's honestly— that's going to be the easiest way to get started with it, is to have it be a part of your work order system. And have it be as simple as— and most of them, if they're designed right, you don't have to know the codes, right? And I'll tell you, like, the systems of yesteryear, you almost had to know the codes and you had to go level by level and be like, well, what I'm looking for, it's in the brake category, and then it's in this brake job, and then it's this, right? Um, and it was cumbersome. But now, nowadays, uh, you can pretty much just go in and into the description field, you just start typing in what the job is you're looking for, and it'll pull up like the 2 or 3 jobs that match that and automatically grab the VMRS code, right? So it's, it's definitely not as hard as it used to be, but, you know, go out and get your— get an FMIS. And if you already have one, you know, figure out if it has VMRS capabilities, um, and just start there.

So simple. Yeah.

Where would you start?

Same place. And if I had a, if I had a software that already had it and I wasn't using it and I didn't know where to start, just, you know, start doing it.

Talk to their super awesome trainer.

Exactly.

Right.

Turn them on and start playing with it.

Like, there's no reason to overcomplicate it. Like, if you try to do this manually, you'd feel overwhelmed, you'd quit, you'd say, I'm done, I'm not doing it, and probably just be in the same boat you are right now.

Yep. Yeah. That's why I like that, you know, most systems are kind of automated with it, have it kind of built in. It's, you know, point and click.

Yep. Out of the box. Yeah. So. Well, all right. Well, that's going to wrap it up for us. If you guys have any questions about VMRS or where to start, you know, happy to have a conversation. You can email us at podcast@rtafleet.com. I'll kick you over to Nathan. He can answer your questions for you. But no, in all seriousness, if you do have questions about that, we've got resources. We can help you out and get you started. Uh, you can email us at podcast@rtafleet.com. Would love to hear too if you have any suggestions or topics that you'd love to hear us talk about. You're gonna hear us pull some of the older episodes too forward. Last week we aired one, uh, it was an old blast from the past. I think it was like episode 8 or something like that. You know, as we go through, there's a lot of people who come in and they start listening from like the last, the last episode. Um, others, they'll start at the very beginning. and then they kind of peter out a little bit. And so we're pulling some of our favorite episodes. You'll hear them every once in a while, uh, just, you know, kind of get them some new air, new life, and just— and honestly, repetition. I love— I'll go back and listen to an episode we recorded like a year ago, and I'll be like, oh yeah, I remember that, right? Like, you know, you kind of forget some of the things that you heard in the moment, right? As if I'm a fleet manager and I've heard one thing, you know, there's a 20 or 30 minute episode. This one's a 30 minute episode. Um, and I might have gotten one or two things the first time I listened to it, but then the second time I go and listen to it, all of a sudden I'm in a different place than I was the first time, and I catch a different meaning, or I catch on to something. There's like a different saying or a different phrase that struck me, right? Like something else resonated. And so it's not enough, you know, like just listening to something once. So you're gonna hear us, like, we'll put through a couple of these older episodes, and that are just some of our favorites that we'll pull through every once in a while.

So Yeah, if it's gold, reshare, right?

Be like Taylor Swift. We're just going to re-record the masters, you know.

There you go.

So that's going to wrap it up for us today. Uh, we will see you next time.

See ya.

Bye.

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